“You will not betray me to—to—your wife?” she panted.
“Barbara!”
“Thank you. Good-night.”
But he still retained her hands. “In a short time, Barbara, I trust you will find one more worthy to receive your love than I have been.”
“Never!” she impulsively answered. “I do not love and forget so lightly. In the years to come, in my old age, I shall still be nothing but Barbara Hare.”
Mr. Carlyle walked away in a fit of musing. The revelation had given him pain, and possibly a little bit of flattery into the bargain, for he was fond of pretty Barbara. Fond in his way—not hers—not with the sort of fondness he felt for his wife. He asked his conscience whether his manner to her in the past days had been a tinge warmer than we bestow upon a sister, and he decided that it might have been, but he most certainly never cast a suspicion to the mischief it was doing.
“I heartily hope she’ll soon find somebody to her liking and forget me,” was his concluding thought. “As to living and dying Barbara Hare, that’s all moonshine, and sentimental rubbish that girls like to—”
“Archibald!”
He was passing the very last tree in the park, the nearest to his house, and the interruption came from a dark form standing under it.
“Is it you, my dearest?”